MONDAY MUSINGS: ON FELIX STURM

This past week former world middleweight champion Felix Sturm took to Twitter to express some views on his recent decision loss to Sam Soliman in Germany.

He tweeted several view points on the fight and how he thought it went, but I’m going to take two of his comments and give my thoughts on them.

It must be noted that this wouldn’t have been possible to do without the help of Sylvana Ambrosanio who was kind enough to translate all of Sturm’s tweets from German into English. Big thank you to Sylvana – you can follow Sylvana on Twitter @a_Sylvana.

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“I was thinking to move to super-middleweight but I won’t. I’ll stay in middleweight. There is 5-6 interesting fights for me that I need to do. After that, super-middleweight!”

I think it is a wise move for Sturm to stay in the 160lb. division. I’m not even sure that a move to super-middleweight in the future would be such a good move. The middleweight division is stacked with talent with plenty of good fights to be made, and if Sturm is keen to throw his name into the mix alongside the likes of Peter Quillin, Gennady Golovkin and Hassan N’Dam to name three then even better.

There’s no doubt that Felix Sturm is a faded fighter to the one of the past; faded in comparison to the one that ventured to America and peppered Oscar De La Hoya’s face with left jabs for 12-rounds. His demise, though, is making for entertaining fights and, furthermore, when he actually does decide to let his hands go in fights his offensive arsenal is still one of the best.

Sturm, providing other fighters are willing to fight him, can fight anyone he wants. He promotes himself and is not attached to any promotional company. He may need to embark on a trip outside of Germany once more in order to make the fights he desires, but on the flip-side of the coin with him losing back-to-back decisions in his homeland then opponents may not be so wary of fighting him on German soil.

Personally I would like to see Felix Sturm share the ring with Gennady Golovkin. I wouldn’t favour him to win, but I do think his jab would present problems for Golovkin. It’s an interesting fight, and perhaps with Sturm likely being the underdog in the fight we would get a strong performance from him.

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“Now I have to remember that for the future to ask the judges before the fight how they will judge; beating up with no class or actually clear punches and then I have to go for what they want and not what the sport is about.” 

If you subscribe to the notion that Matthew Macklin and Martin Murray were robbed when they fought Sturm in Germany, then you probably think that he already speaks to the judges before fights to find out what work they prefer.

The simple fact is that many judges prefer different things, which in turn can create questionable decisions that many fans deem to be a robbery. Some judges, like Jerry Roth, prefer to favour the fighter who comes forward and forces the fight, while other judges, like John Keane, favour the fighter who lands the cleaner punches through-out the fight.

Basically, what Sturm is alluding to is that he will change his style to a style that the judges will prefer. He wouldn’t necessarily need to ask the judges what they prefer, he could just research how they have scored certain fights from the past on Boxrec and gain his info from there.

But should a fighter have to change his style just to suit the judges at ringside? It puts home the point that judges are having a bigger effect on the outcome of fights than they should. A fighter, in the ring, can decide who wins the fights with his action or, in Sturm’s case against Soliman, his lack of action.

I do take Sturm’s point though. He truly believes he won a close fight and is stunned as to why he didn’t get the decision. If there were clearer guidelines on how and why judge’s score fights like they do then a greater understanding of how fights are scored will stop fighters and fans alike crying robbery after every close decision.